The tasks of traditional geometric graphics applications can be partitioned into three functional categories: structure traversal, geometry processing, and rendering. Structure traversal refers to the traversal of an application's graphics data structure, either by the application or by a graphics library.
Geometry processing refers to floating point intensive operations, such as vertex transformation and shading, that convert the image data from an applications format into a geometric format of vertices comprising the image and vertex properties, such as color. Finally, rendering refers to the process of calculating individual pixel values for the image that are stored in graphics memory based on the transformed geometric data.
Graphics accelerator cards are used extensively for graphics applications to provide 3D graphics images. Some such cards include parallel processing when rendering. However, known accelerator graphics do not typically have the ability to scale to different size environments. For example, typically a system in which two processors drive one digital analog converter are not upgradable to drive two converters in the event that two displays are desired to be driven at the same time. Conversely, a system in which two processors drive two converters can not be transformed into a system in which both processors drive the same converter. In addition, in known systems there is no way of actually adding more driving capability to the system. Accordingly, what is desired is a system and method for allowing for a scalable graphics architecture. The system should be easy to implement, should be cost-effective, and should be adaptable to existing environments. The present invention addresses such a need.